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BY KIM MORGAN
Insomnia Not Rated Opens Friday, Sept. 18
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Film noir is characterized by certain essential ingredients: the duality of a man's tormented soul; expressionistic black-and-white lighting; dusty rays of sunlight barely peeking through thick venetian blinds in a private detective's office; Barbara Stanwyck; Humphrey Bogart; Raymond Chandler. For purists, noirish films such as John M. Stahl's Technicolor melodrama Leave Her to Heaven, Raoul Walsh's western Pursued and Alexander MacKendrick's talky, Clifford Odets-scripted Sweet Smell of Success do not fit into the formula. The settings aren't right; the stylistics are off. Yet despite the stylistic and thematic tenets that unify the genre, it need not conform to its literal meaning of "black film." As in the aforementioned films, black can be Gene Tierney's heart, black can be a Spanish-American-War veteran, black can be a wicked gossip columnist. Nowhere is this so provocatively demonstrated than in Swedish director Erik Skjoldbjaerg's Insomnia, a picture that proves that light can obscure as much as it reveals. After a jarring opening sequence--the artistically shot murder of a young woman--Insomnia begins with deceptive simplicity. Jonas Engström (Stellan Skarsgård), a Swedish detective, and his partner, Erik Vik (Sverre Anker Ousdal), are brought to Norway to investigate the slaying. Stumping local authorities, the proficient killer has left little clues--he even shampooed the girl's hair after her death. Hence the need for Jonas, who, though caught in "intimate conversation" with a witness in his last case, is considered the best homicide detective in the field. Using the victim's backpack as a lure, Jonas entices the murderer back to the shed where he committed the crime. An easy trap, but not too easy. The criminal sees his pursuers and flees. During a confusing chase through a thick Norwegian fog, Jonas shoots a figure he presumes to be the wanted man. Unfortunately, it's his partner, who dies before his very eyes. To avoid getting busted for his blunder, Jonas covers up the crime, then must make a disturbing pact with the person who knows the truth: the killer himself. What happens next pushes the film into the territory of a noir thriller inside a morality tale inside a character study of a man plagued by neurotic and sociopathic decay. Rather than simply rely on the standard methods of a crime story, Insomnia indulges the viewer with a scene of the more interesting action inside Jonas' head. An insomniac, Jonas constantly battles with the useless shades covering the window of his hotel room. He cannot stand the light. Stuck in the throes of a blinding Arctic summer, Jonas becomes more and more agitated and, without his partner around to keep him in check, outright despicable. He tampers with and plants evidence and displays a selfish and altogether conflicted personality. Yet because of his ambiguity, the viewer cannot purely hate him. Jonas is an antihero, but he's more subtle than others of his kind. Despite his icy exterior, he is filled with a feverish lust that comes out in two situations where he mistakes innocent flirtation for something more significant. On the way to a crime scene, a teenage witness allows him to stick his hand between her legs, but the moment rapidly sours. While willingly receiving a pass from a pretty hotel receptionist, Jonas goes too far by roughly biting at her breasts and her body; she runs away terrified. Yearning for more only to be repelled, he is left a broken-down, dirty old man. Even though he is lecherous, we feel sorry for him. As Jonas, Skarsgård is brilliant. Repressed and unctuous yet oddly handsome, he gives a performance so compelling that one could easily picture him as Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. Skjoldbjaerg did right in casting Skarsgård, for the director's vision of a man being suffocated by light would not have worked with a predictably disturbing actor (such as Christopher Walken). Skjoldbjaerg also did right by not making his neo-noir a typically pedestrian display of expressionistic shadowing to reveal the dualities of a man's soul. He instead creates a world of pale yellows that envelop his character like a piss-stained sheet. Sickly, stifling and embarrassing, Insomnia is a work of blinding brilliance.
originally published September 16, 1998
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